


In Death, Sacrifice

by PinkAfroPuffs



Series: Here Lies the Abyss [3]
Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age II, Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: F/M, Gen, Other, the beginning of a new one, the end of an eraaaa
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-10
Updated: 2019-06-10
Packaged: 2020-04-23 21:50:36
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,052
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19159663
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PinkAfroPuffs/pseuds/PinkAfroPuffs
Summary: The impossible is always possible when you don't care about canon.The final chapter in the Here Lies The Abyss series.





	In Death, Sacrifice

“Is everything in Tales of the Champion true, or was Varric just embellishing it?”

Since she was staying in Skyhold for the time being, Mamoru thought it would be good to get to know the Champion, as she seemed personable enough- if not a bit strange. He didn’t mind. Some might say the same about him, after all.

He bit very deeply into the skin of the apple he was holding, some of the juice dribbling down his hand as he used it to cover his mouth, as not to seem like someone without manners. “Because I know him well enough now to trust that his lies are mostly true.”

Hawke grinned at him then, leaning back from where she’d taken up post on the ramparts. “Depends on what part. And if you can keep a secret.”

He smiled. “I can certainly try. How about...the Arishok fight? True or false.”

“True.”

“What?” He leaned back on his forearms, carelessly rolling the apple around in his hand. “You really-”

“I ran in circles trying to hit him, if that’s what you’re asking,” she seemed rather embarrassed to say so, averting her gaze, “but Varric hardly mentions that. He says it wouldn’t be very _romantic_ or something. Me, I thought it was _horrifying_ .” Her hands came up above her head. “Usually I don’t mind when someone’s _throwing themselves at me_ ,” she laughed at her own joke, flashing her teeth beneath her red rouge, “but the Arishok was _not_ coming at me sexily. And he had _two_ huge cleavers, big as my head!” She scoffed. “It was obviously cheating. Isabela even says so, and she’d know.”

Whenever she name-dropped one of her friends, he felt closer to her, somehow. At least now he didn’t have to specifically ask about them to know anything. “How’d you survive?”

“With my _stunning_ wit and impressive physique,” she grinned. “And, well,” her green eyes twinkled mischievously against the dark brown of her skin, “I didn’t want to embarrass myself in front of Fenris.”

He’d heard a lot about Fenris, actually, from both Varric and Hawke, though not nearly as much as he assumed he should have. “I hear he’s quite handsome,” he found himself teasing. Hopefully that wouldn’t be over the line.

“Oh, he’s the _most_ handsome,” she gushed, throwing her head back. “And the most fearsome. And pointy. Fenris has always been pointy.” She pulled on and played with a lock of her curly hair, gathered into a big puff on top of her head. Very weakly, she added, “He’s going to be very pointy after this whole thing. I have a feeling that stuffing marshmallows into my mouth isn’t going to get me out of this one.”

He wanted to ask what that meant, but he knew about Hawke’s reputation as a jokester- sometimes at the behest of those surrounding her. Softly, he said, “We’ll get you home to him.”

She didn’t answer. Eyes cast on the sunset, she crossed her arms on the handrail before she sighed. “I hope so. But I fear my luck has run out.”

* * *

 

The Blight had taken her brother and sister each. Her mother, bless and curse her, was with the Maker now, her life stolen by carelessness. Hawke’s carelessness. And father. Father had passed away long ago, but sometimes, times like now, she wondered if he had really still been there with them, that year before the Blight. He’d been very tired and sad, if she thought of it clearly, all calloused hands and warm hugs, soft scolding and then loud.

She wondered if he was resting. If the three of them were, and that Bethany would join them soon.

No. Not Bethany.

_Please, Maker. I’ll do anything. Take me instead._

That beast was a means to an end. Stroud would be able to tell the Wardens what to do, the archdemon would die, and Corypheus, that mistake, _her_ mistake, would die with her. She would have peace. No more sleepless nights, waking Fenris by accident with her foolishness. No more jokes when she really wanted to sob her eyes out and melt into a puddle of useless goo that didn’t have to _do_ anything, _be_ anything. No more tragedy, mistakes, or guilt.

No more Hawke.

“We might have a chance if someone stays.” It would be her. It _had_ to be her. Stroud had to lead the Wardens, and she had no purpose. Empty sentiments, echoes of past wrongs. A stain.

Why did the Inquisitor have such an expression on his face? What was he seeing when he looked at her, his own face twisted into something that was not entirely _agony_ but not wholly bewilderment?

“I’ll stay.” She said. “The others should go.”

He’d known. Of course. Leave it to her to open up _just_ a bit to the person best equipped to read every signal, every warning sign she’d sent out. It was clear in the strange, wide-eyed look he was giving her, his eyebrows slowly settling atop them to make it _furious._

“Have you lost your mind?” His accent was thicker than before. She wondered if that meant something. “Hawke, I’m not running a suicide mission-”

“It...grieves me to admit, Inquisitor, that Serah Hawke may be correct,” Solas began, but Mamoru hushed him like one would a child.

“Be quiet. I’m thinking-” He covered his ears when the ear-splitting roar shook the area and their team at once. But Hawke shook her head. There was no other outcome, and she’d be damned if someone else died for her.

“Stroud has to stay for the Grey Wardens,” she began. _For Bethany._ “Who’s going to lead them if he dies? If you excuse my bravado or whatever, I’m just a nobody. There’s nothing important that I need to do.”

He ignored her. A spark of magic tickled her nose, and his mark crackled loudly near the rift before them. “...I can open rifts,” he said. “And close them. Open and closed isn’t much different than forward and back, right?”

“I see.” The barrier around them was weakening, but Solas still had energy to talk. “Pulling the rift towards you sounds like a wonderful idea until you put it into practice.”

“Everything does.” Mamoru hissed, his rift-blighted hand already straining against their exit. “Everything takes effort. Now if you don’t mind me _sayin’_ so, _hahren_ , I’d like for you to either figure out a way to help me or shut the fuck up!”

Explosions had become frequent in the fade, but this one was like no other; Hawke recalled later that struck her like a blow to the head, her own magic pushing against its force to make a meager protective barrier for herself and two persons near her. Then, nothing.

* * *

 

Green. Like low-hanging leaves on trees in mid-summer, his old mercenary armor, and bitter elfroot, green felt like home. He’d sprinted under those trees to chase old lovers, sewn his old armor and passed it on to his brother Shinya, and brewed an old recipe for elfroot tea now and again for his mother, whose bones were getting a bit stiff in her recent days as a hunter.

He wanted to touch it. Wanting so much it burned his skin, his fingers, his arm all the way up to his shoulder. _Needing_ it so much he screamed and cursed. Like being in tug of war with a boar. Or being in tug of war with the Self.

“Don’t make me. Don’t make me do this.”

He wished, for once that things could be simple. That nobody died, that the court didn’t see him as a savage, that he didn’t have to _argue_ about how slavery was _bad_.

It wasn’t right. It wasn’t _just_. To have someone lose their family- their home, their brother, their friends, even, for this journey...and then to die. Where was the justice for her? Who would take vengeance on the world for those wrongs? The Maker? The Old gods? His own had been silent for so long, he’d begun to doubt their relevance and it made his spine bristle like sandpaper and become just as flammable.

 _I want to go home. Not the fade. I want to go_ Home.

A weight pressed against his shoulder, warm like a winter coat and heavy like summer heat, and the rope suddenly gave way.

He stumbled against something. Hawke was speaking, he was sure, but was it real or the Fade?

“Stroud is here. But we nearly lost our lives in the Fade because of your foolishness! I understand panic, but don’t you think helping the Darkspawn that was locked in _your_ dungeons the _wrong_ person to ally with?”

The swinging pendulum of life seemed to have swung Hawke from having a depressive meltdown to chastising a whole army of Grey Wardens. Mamoru was quite grateful for it, given the headache he suddenly had, and the green spots in his vision. People suddenly started calling his name, asking for instruction, what to do about the Wardens. Irate, he said, “I don’t give a flying fuck about any of that! Take me to a _god damned hospital!”_

* * *

 

“Inquisitor?”

Silence met Talia Hawke as she entered his room- she’d been told he had no company at the time, but was resting after their previous endeavor, and Varric had told Hawke to go before she left. “You know, no letters to write and all that. Real simple,” he’d said.

When she found him he was laying on his bed on his back, bandages wrapped around his head and his non-rift blighted hand, and again, up that same blighted arm. Mamoru opened one eye to look at her crossing her arms at him in amusement and said, “Too much, right?”

She stifled a laugh. “Let me guess. Your lover did the bandage work?”

He groaned. “Indeed she did. Admittedly having her attention makes me feel a bit better, but now I’m all stiff in the bandages.”

Hawke let out another little huff. “I came to tell you I’m leaving. You were right about what you said. Before.”

“Which time?” He unwrapped the bandage around his head so that his vallaslin were more visible. “I’m right a great deal of the time.”

“You know, before. When we were up against the big scary monster and the whole ‘what about Fenris’ thing.” It came out a little rushed, but he smiled. Good. She wouldn’t be repeating herself. “So I’m heading home.”

“I thought you didn’t live in Kirkwall anymore?”

“Home is wherever Fenris is,” she informed him. “So no. Kirkwall is no longer home.” She shifted in her boots a bit, eyes darting away from him before she let out an exhausted sigh. “Thank you. For...a lot.”

“No. Thank you,” he sighed. “I don’t think we would’ve gotten through it without you.”

A whole string of words got caught and knotted up on her tongue; unable to untangle them, she swallowed. “Take...care of Varric, alright? He seems put together, but he’s really not.”

Mamoru nodded solemnly. “I will.” She began towards the door, stopping only when he cleared his throat at her. “Serah Hawke?”

That was a very uncomfortable way of addressing her. “Yes, Ser Bandages?”

He let out another cough. “Would you mind exchanging letters from time to time? It gets awfully boring when all you’ve got is your family and a castle full of people who call me Inquisitor.”

The Champion threw her head back and laughed. “Right, I can do that. So long as you don’t call me Serah again.”

“I can’t make promises like that. What if I’m making fun of you?”

“That's the only occasion where that is permitted,” she agreed. “Now, I don’t know about you, but I’ve a husband to apologize to.”

The Inquisitor, who said more with his face than he could his words, only nodded and gestured to her. “Save travels, Hawke.”

She shook her head. “Call me Talia. I don’t have a ‘house’ anymore.” Life was easier that way. The dead lay buried but it seemed Talia still had some living to do. Maybe that was all that mattered.

"Serah Talia," he teased.

"I changed my mind, don't say it ever." She hissed, and the Inquisitor cackled behind her as she closed the door with a definitive  _ bang _ .

 

**Author's Note:**

> this one had been staring me in the face like. forever. and then i went on a walk and was like. "oh. oh my. I KNOW WHAT TO WRITE NOW. EXCELLENT" so. thank you for reading it!


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